00:00:00 Music Transition Gentle, trilling music with a steady drumbeat plays under the dialogue. 00:00:01 Promo Promo Speaker: Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of MaximumFun.org and is distributed by NPR. [Music fades out.] 00:00:12 Jordan Host I’m Jordan Morris. It’s Bullseye. Morris 00:0014 Music Transition “Huddle Formation” from the album Thunder, Lightning, Strike by The Go! Team. A fast, upbeat, peppy song. Music plays as Jordan speaks, then fades out. 00:00:21 Jordan Host Gene Luen Yang is a cartoonist and graphic novelist. Four years ago, Gene won a MacArthur Genius Grant—an honor that isn’t given to many comics creators. That same year, the Library of Congress named Gene as its ambassador for young people’s literature. He’s written a lot of critically acclaimed graphic novels. American Born Chinese, Boxers & Saints, and The Shadow Hero, just to name a few. These days, Gene’s working at DC Comics as a writer for Superman. His latest work for DC can be found in the new graphic novel, Superman Smashes the Klan—a book where, um, Superman smashes the KKK. Not too long ago, though, Gene was a teacher. He taught computer science at Bishop O’Dowd High School, in Oakland California. The school was known for its basketball program. And while Gene wasn’t exactly a sports guy, he soon took an interest in the team. He got to know the coach and the players, and he wrote a graphic novel about it. Dragon Hoops follows the year he spent observing the high school’s basketball team and their road to the state championship. But it’s also sort of a memoir. That year, at Bishop O’Dowd, would end up being his last when Gene took a full-time gig at DC Comics. [Music fades in.] Anyway, both books are great, and we’re thrilled to have Gene on the show. Let’s get to the interview. 00:01:33 Music Transition Relaxed, percussive transition music. Music plays underneath the dialogue, then fades out. 00:01:38 Jordan Host Gene Luen Yang! Welcome to Bullseye. 00:01:41 Gene Luen Guest Thank you. Thank you, Jordan. Thank you for having me. Yang 00:01:43 Jordan Host Let’s start at the beginning, shall we? I would love to hear about how you first took an interest in comics. Was it—you know— alternative comics in high school? Was it superhero comics in the drugstore, when you were a kid? Do you remember the first time you encountered them? 00:01:59 Gene Guest I remember the exact first issue that I bought. It was DC Comics Presents #57, starring Superman and the Atomic Knights. My mom bought that comic for me off of a spinner rack at our local bookstore. It was, like, a mall bookstore. So, they don’t really have these spinner racks anymore, but for younger listeners, it’s a wire- frame rack that would carry a month’s worth of comics that would sit in the corner of almost every bookstore in America, back in the ‘80s. 00:02:27 Jordan Host Do you remember why you picked it? Had you seen a Superman cartoon on TV or something like that? Or, you know, was it just the least expensive one? 00:02:36 Gene Guest To be honest, I didn’t pick it. My mom picked it for me. I had actually had my eyes set on another comic that had The Thing—that big rock monster from Fantastic Four. 00:02:47 Jordan Host Oh yeah. “It’s clobberin’ time,” sure. 00:02:50 Gene Guest Yeah! “It’s clobbering time!” Exactly! [Jordan laughs.] That’s the comic I wanted. But she thought The Thing looked too scary. So, she bought me Superman, instead, because—you know—Superman is, like, this big, blue boy scout. He’s super safe. [Laughs.] So, that’s the one I got. I was—I was not happy about it, but that comic did blow my mind, because it was about the atomic bomb. You know. And this is ‘80s, everybody was thinking about the atomic bomb. 00:03:14 Jordan Host Was that something you were scared of, as a kid? Did you see stuff like that on the news and—was this, like, speaking to an anxiety that you had? 00:03:22 Gene Guest Oh, absolutely. I think pretty much my entire class, right, at my elementary school, was scared of the bomb. I think every kid who grew up in the ‘80s had some sort of, like, nuclear nightmare anxiety. 00:03:36 Jordan Host [Chuckles.] I’ll admit, I read a fair amount of DC comics, and I have not heard of the Atomic Knights. Have they—have they stayed in the continuity or are they just a product of the ‘80s? 00:03:46 Gene Guest They are super obscure. I think they’re still around. I mean, both DC and Marvel, they are really good at keeping their really obscure characters alive, at least in the background of their big titles. And the Atomic Knights are this group of superheroes who dress up like medieval knights and they ride these giant, mutated dogs to fight crime. 00:04:08 Jordan Host Oh, cool. Yeah! That’s due for a reboot, if they haven’t done it yet. 00:04:11 Gene Guest I agree. I totally agree. 00:04:14 Jordan Host Do you remember first having the thought, “I should try this”? You know, how did you—do you remember the thought process when you went from, “This is something I enjoy with my leisure time” to “I should try and do this”? 00:04:27 Gene Guest Oh, it was—it was within weeks of getting that DC Comics Presents. I think that’s actually one of my favorite parts of comics. That’s one of my favorite aspects of the comics medium, is—you know, the dividing line between who’s a reader and who’s a creator—it’s just really easy to cross. Back in the ‘80s, if you were a kid who wanted to release a music album, you really couldn’t do it. If you were a kid who wanted to make your own movie, you really couldn’t do it. But you could make your own comic. You know. Anybody can make their own comic, and that’s exactly what I did. I had a best friend named Jeremy, in 5th grade, who had been collecting comics for years, at that point. So, right after I got my first comic book, we started talking comics and then—within a couple weeks—we were sitting down, at the lunch table during lunch, drawing our own comics. And we use to get his mom to xerox them and we’d sell them at school, for 50 cents apiece. I think we made, like, 8 bucks. It was… 00:05:19 Jordan Host That’s pretty good! 00:05:20 Gene Guest That was the beginning. That was the beginning of my comic book career. 00:05:23 Jordan Host Do you remember what those early comic books were about? 00:05:26 Gene Guest They were mostly superhero comics—just, like, knockoffs of some of the most popular superheroes of the time. I do remember doing a comic called Trans-Smurfers, which was a combination of the Smurfs and Transformers. And they were these, like, robotic Smurfs who could turn into robotic fruit. I don’t know why I thought that I was awesome. But—[laughs] that’s what that— 00:05:46 Jordan Host I mean, I kind of agree, actually. I don’t know why I think that’s awesome, either. But it kind of is. So, you have—it sounds like you’ve been reading DC comics since you’ve been reading comics, and you have done a fair amount of work with Superman. So, I think when I talk to other comics people about Superman, there are a lot of people—especially people my age—who, like, have a little bit of trouble getting into the character. You know. Maybe they think he’s a little corny or he’s overpowered. What about the character resonates with you? 00:06:25 Gene Guest Well, first, I am one of those people. You know, especially when I was a kid. I totally thought Superman was corny. I never would have chosen a Superman comic as my very first comic book. My mom did that for me. You know? And I just thought, back then, out of all of the superheroes out there, he was the most boring one. And now, I also have to admit even though I work for DC Comics, now, when I was a kid I was much more of a Marvel fan. For whatever reason. You know, Spider-man and the Hulk just seemed so much cooler than Superman and Wonder Woman. I think Batman might have been the only DC comic section—that was the only DC hero that seemed cool. But as I got older, I realized my parents are immigrants. My parents came to the United States from Asia in the late 1960s and they are super corny. [Laughs.] They, like—as a kid, I just thought they were such dorks, you know? And I was always, like, kind of ashamed that some of their dorkiness had rubbed off on me.